Green tech doesn't reduce computational demands?

Ted Sampson over at Infoworld writes a nice column on sustainable IT which is a good read. His latest deadpans a briefing about AMD's energy efficient quad-core processor, where a journalist asked if AMD would be hurting its own sales with the release of its newest energy-efficient chip, code name Barcelona. The reasoning is as follows: If AMD is selling a processor capable of doing twice as much work as its previous CPU, wouldn't that mean that organizations will end buying fewer products from the company? Plink.

Oh, absolutely not. As explained, the underlying, mistaken, assumption is that companies have essentially maxed out their processing and storage demands and have no need to grow any further. Apparently, after you the empty half your datacenter using green techniques like virtualization, and equipping servers with energy-sipping chips, the premise is that you will fill it right back up again with more servers. To, you know, accomodate for the growth of your company's IT needs.

I sympathize with what AMD is trying to do, really, and we have some glowing remarks on their progress. And obviously no org is going to suggest at a press conference that they are going to put their chipmakers, datacenter architects, and hardware vendors buddies out of business by selling more energy-efficient wares. But this fart-in-a-spacesuit logic catches me between laughing and taking the matter seriously; are we really to believe that the rationale for implementing a green tech solution is to just buy more equipment to satisfy our insatiable build-out of IT? If you believe that one, TH has a nice bridge in lower Manhattan we'd like to sell you. :: Inforworld